Culture Vulture

Broadband

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:58:22 -0500

As the fall’s political campaigns get underway in earnest after next week’s primaries, one issue that ought to merit the attention of Vermonters is how well we are doing with regard to meeting the goal of having the entire state accessible to highspeed, affordable broadband Internet service by the end of 2010. The same goes for mobile, cellular telephone service.
Last year, the Legislature, with the enthusiastic backing of Gov. James Douglas, voted through Act 79, which established a Vermont Telecommunications Authority to push for the establishment of high speed Internet and cellular telephone services throughout the state. Known as the “E-State” initiative, it’s an effort to bring Vermont into the 21st century in terms of information infrastructure, and the authority was empowered to issue up to $40 million in revenue bonds for this purpose. It can also establish partnerships with providers of telecom services, construct, own and provide communications facilities and form nonprofit subsidiary corporations for special projects, among other things.
This was, and remains, a great idea, one that was supported by both major political parties. Achieving bi-partisan agreement on an issue so central to Vermont’s economic growth doesn’t happen everyday. But in this case, the obvious worth of helping foster the communications capability of the state to handle the ever-increasing needs of private sector, jobs producing enterprises reverberated clearly across the political spectrum.
With the state’s tax structure on both the personal and corporate sides more or less maxed out — a further jump in tax rates should really be off the table — and public spending being slashed about as close to the bone as it can probably get without affecting important services — the only way out of the tight budgetary box the state finds itself in is through economic growth. Today, and in the future, economic growth will hinge more than ever on sturdy broadband links that connect Vermont with not only the rest of the country but the world.
For many years Vermont has been viewed by its cheerleaders as ideally situated to attract high-income entrepreneurs who may be consultants, or may own businesses, but in either case would inject some welcome revenue into the state’s economy in one way or another. That vision has been thrawted by a poor-to-middling broadband infrastructure, along with punishingly high tax rates on high income earners. While it’s not fashionable to lament the plight of those pulling down six figures and beyond and the amounts they’re asked to fork over in state taxes, it is a disincentive to those who might otherwise move to Vermont and bring that wealth with them, and who have the freedom to pretty much live where they want. The point is, while it’s proper to worry more about how, for example, the less well-off will afford to heat their homes this winter, continually raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for additional government services isn’t a free lunch either. There comes a point when it’s self-defeating.
The state has at least tried to address the broadband issue through the E-state initiative, but one problem is that the goal posts keep getting moved back. It may be all well and good to be able to claim with a straight face that 100 percent of the state will have broadband access by 2010, but what kind of access will that be? Technology keeps marching on, bandwidth needs keep rising, and what might have been considered state-of-the-art in 2007 will seem barely more than dial-up two years from now.
And given the difficulties of attracting telecom companies to actually install and maintain towers to service often sparsely populated corners of the state, getting to the bare minimum of how the state defines accessibility — transfer rates of 1.5 megabytes of data per second in one direction, plus mobile cell phone access everywhere in the state — will be a big challenge. According to the best estimates from state officials, we’re only about 80 percent or so there. Getting the final mile — or the final 5 percent — will be the really hard part, because those areas aren’t likely to be very profitable, if at all.
If the state were flush with cash, you could argue that this is where the government should step in and build the infrastructure and own it until it could be sold to a private entrepreneur. But we’re not flush, and probably won’t be for awhile. What the state can do is continue to emphasize and make pushing broadband a high priority and resist backsliding on a commitment to high technology. There are so many ways that the presence of robust Internet services can save money — from health care to education to all manner of economic services — that the minuscule investment the state is really calling upon itself to make seems like a bargain. And let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that access translates into actual usage. It only means we theoretically can.
It seems amazing that in this day and age many communities in Vermont — including nearby Dorset — are still only partially covered by broadband Internet and its cousin, cellular phone service. Go anywhere in Europe, and in growing parts of Asia, and it’s not an issue. If Vermont wants to be part of the 21st century and reverse its aging population statistics, we should be pushing harder on the hi-tech front — and not be content or pat ourselves on the back for making it “accessible.” There isn’t any harm in going to the next level on this one.

Back to school

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:23:53 -0500

This year’s political conventions conveniently coincide with the start of school for area students and educators, which prompts a reminder that through the noise and spin of both major party’s campaigns, surprisingly little has been heard from either candidate about education issues beyond the usual platitudes.
That may be due in part because so many other issues bulk so large. Whoever inherits the White House next year will have a full plate of problems and leftover business from the outgoing Bush administration.
Let’s start with foreign affairs. Arranging some kind of graceful exit from Iraq, if that is even possible, would alone be a task challenging enough for the nimblest of administrations. While there’s been some good news from Iraq lately in terms of an improving security picture, it could all evaporate in the blink of an eye, or a wave of suicide bombings. We need to leave Iraq, or at least drastically scale down our forces committed there, to quell a growing problem in Afghanistan, which could have been avoided if we hadn’t gotten sidetracked in Iraq. That’s water under the bridge now, but we face many years of continued involvement there in all likelihood, fighting the real war that we should have “stayed the course” with back in 2003.
And now of course, we face a heightened level of tension with Russia. Their invasion of Georgia — an independent, democratic state that wants to be allied with the West — may not be the start of the second Cold War, but the authoritarian Russian state has served notice it’s back to business as usual, now that we’ve helped refill their once-depleted coffers with money for their oil and natural gas.
Meanwhile there’s all the other big picture stuff — relations with China, who, despite the glow of Olympic harmony is ready and willing to claim its place as an economic superpower — and all the other gnarly Middle Eastern business like finally coming up with a workable solution to the Palestine-Israeli conundrum and the rest of the global war on terror.
Then there’s the economy. It’s number one on the list of voter’s concerns, the pollsters tell us, as well it should be. The past year has seen a housing market and mortgage meltdown, panic on Wall Street, an economy hovering near a recession and unemployment and inflation rising. We have gas prices at painfully high levels, and other commodity prices, which may finally be showing signs of easing only because of the specter of economic recession, at near all-time highs.
It’s enough to make you wonder why anyone wants the job.
Against that background, education is somewhere in the second half of the top ten.
It shouldn’t be, because ultimately most, if not all, of the nation’s problems will be solved through a smarter workforce, one that knows how to creatively exploit the opportunities made possible through technology and awareness of the great world beyond our borders. If there is one red flag that’s flashing brighter than ever it’s the chronic inability of U.S. education to recruit enough qualified math and science teachers. That's not to say there aren't many talented and dedicated ones currently serving in the ranks of teachers — just that there aren't enough of them. All other subjects are critical too, but for years the pay scales for would be mathematicians and scientists have been severely out of balance between what teaching offers and what is available in the private sector. Somehow, being a math and science teacher needs to become something other than a vow of poverty relative to what else is out there for the best and the brightest in these critical fields.
Instead of getting bogged down in endless arguments about No Child Left Behind, or even more foolishly, re-debating settled science on the theory of evolution with nonsense about “intelligent design,” let’s get with the program and stop wasting time and resources. The rest of the world is passing us by.
TRIM for Edit
It doesn’t have to be that way, but it will be if we allow our politicians to go on believing that we are in fact, as stupid as many of them apparently think we are.

Think before leaping

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:16:48 -0500

It’s understandable that in the wake of the Brooke Bennett tragedy, lawmakers and citizens around the state are rushing to urge enactment of far-reaching legislation to better control, in their opinion, persons found guilty of committing one of the crimes typically grouped in the category of sexual offense.
The death of the young 12 year-old girl was a senseless tragedy that has many people asking if it could have been prevented, or the chances of it occurring lessened, if Vermont had had a tougher law governing sex offenders. “Jessica’s Law, ” a statute enacted initially in Florida in 2005, which calls for a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in jail and lifetime electronic monitoring of adults convicted of lewd and lascivious acts against a victim less than 12 years-old, has been frequently invoked over the past month as a piece of legislation that ought to be part of the state’s penal code. Governor Douglas says he supports the concept. Petitions have been circulated. At one point state leaders seemed to be on the verge of calling a special session to consider enactment of either Jessica’s law, or something like it. However, that idea didn’t pan out, but we can be certain that the issue is far from dead, and that legislators will be asked to consider something new, and more stringent, in the way of sex offender legislation.
Lawmaking in the midst of an election season is rarely a good idea, and given the emotions that an issue such as this releases, it was fortunate such a special legislative session didn’t work out.
Sex crimes, rightly, are a hyper sensitive subject. For that precise reason, lawmakers should be very careful when they sit down in Montpelier next year to write new rules on the appropriate punishments.
Vermont may not have the “toughest” laws on the books regarding sex offenders of the 50 states, but on the surface they seem pretty stiff. Right now those found guilty face a mandatory five-year minimum sentence, along with long term placement on the state’s sex offender registry, which they have to check in with by mail once or year, or notify if they move.
While many people today may not be overly concerned about protecting the privacy rights of convicted sex offenders, the fact remains that they are still citizens entitled to constitutional protections. Some sex offenders may be so hardened that rehabilitation is impossible or difficult at best. Others may be sincerely remorseful about their transgressions and want to make a fresh start after they’ve paid their debt to society. Any new rules and regulations should not remove all possibility of this occurring.
The real issue lawmakers ought to address is why aren’t the rules currently on the books aren’t good enough, if in fact they are not. Ensuring adequate enforcement of existing sex offender laws should be the first priority.
For instance, if you log on to the state’s current sex offender registry and pull up the list of names for Bennington County — 32 in all — you will find that 16 of them — half the total — have the “treatment status” listed as “unavailable” or, more disturbingly, as “non-compliant.” What does that mean?
Before we go rushing off to urge passage of new, supposedly tougher sex offender legislation, maybe we should fix what may be broken or not working well, or not funded enough.
For instance, perhaps sex offenders could be required to check in with authorities in person more than once or twice a year. Maybe, it should also be mandatory when a convicted sex offender is released from prison into society, local police officials should be required to make a direct, in-person contact — just so the former felons knows they’re on the radar screen and the police get an opportunity to make an assessment of the risk level they pose.
And when it comes to the funding side of all of this, voters should remember that tougher sentencing, more jail space, more supervision, all cost money which is not is overflowing abundance right now. Many would say that protecting one innocent child from the depraved actions of a sex offender is worth every penny we can possibly throw at it. But, you could say the same thing about health insurance, or education reform and probably a dozen other things, and you would be right — but even in prosperous times there’s only so much money to go around. Choices have to get made.
Sex crimes grow from multiple complex sources and no one piece of legislation, as Senator Dick Sears, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and someone who has been at the center of criminal justice issues in the state for a long time has observed, will adequately provide a solution to the problem. These are heinous, disgusting crimes, which deserve harsh punishment, but a lock ‘em up and throw away the key approach may not be the answer either.

The Coming U.S. manufacturing boom

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:19:37 -0500

For more than two decades, Americans have watched with varying degrees of dismay as the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy – once our backbone and a source of enormous national pride – seemed destined to wither and die. Many domestic manufacturers went up market in search of high value products that required considerable expertise and skill that was less likely to be uncompetitive on labor costs alone. But for many in the businesses of making things, it seemed a dreary future of endlessly spinning around on the automate, emigrate or evaporate mantra.

But in one of the stranger twists of the seemingly “bad news” of historically high oil and energy prices, comes a new scenario, to go along with the related “good news” of greater awareness of the need for conservation and fuel efficiency. That new twist is the growing attractiveness of the U.S. as a place to make and manufacture things.

As Time Magazine put it in a recent article, at $4 a gallon for gas, suddenly the world gets big again. Shipping a container of goods from China has tripled in price in the last eight years. And really, how many trips to far off manufacturing sites in China and other parts of the Far East does the average business executive need before that starts to seem a whole lot less exotic, as well as expensive?

Cost will be the driver, of course, but if it costs just as much to ship stuff in from overseas as it does from the “Rust” belt, or even Vermont, it would seem a lot more attractive, as well as simpler to do that.

If this return of manufacturing to the U.S. does gather steam, the factories that will profit the most are those that are already highly automated, or have a business plan that relies on high tech manufacturing to lock in savings and efficiencies. There will be more jobs, we would think and hope, but the work force will have to be more skilled because their counterparts elsewhere – despite inflationary pressures – will still be getting paid a fraction of what U.S. workers would need to earn.

Still, it is silver lining, potentially – one of several that results from higher energy prices. Maybe now is the time for government officials in Vermont to start thinking about how they might want to explore cashing in on the possibility.

Solar tax credits

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:27:58 -0500

We were glad to see that the federal government, specifically the Bureau of Land Management, came to its senses before too much harm was done and announced last week it was lifting a freeze on new solar energy developments on public lands, about a month after the original edict went into effect.
The justification for the suspension of processing new applications to build solar power plants in six Western states was that they needed more time to study the environmental impacts of solar energy, and that they were already severely backlogged with pre-existing applications.
While we can appreciate the practicality of wanting to manage an overflow of applications wisely, it’s nevertheless remarkable that offshore drilling for oil gets the rapt attention of the President of the United States, while the solar industry has to push and claw to get a spectacularly ill-timed moratorium on renewable (and non-OPEC) energy reversed. Offshore drilling has its place, but only as one of several initiatives that need to be pushed. You would have thought solar energy would have been right up there at the top.
Solar energy isn’t the magic bullet that will slay the energy predicament we’ve managed to have gotten ourselves into. Wth the connivance of Congress, the White House and the auto industry since that late 1980s, a series of opportunities were missed that could have prevented the debacle of $4 per gallon gasoline. But that’s history now. The issue is what are we going to do going forward.
Amazingly, Congress is doing its share in the dithering dance, leaving town for its July 4th break without getting around to passing an extension — an improvement of the existing legislation was probably too much to hope for — of the solar tax credit. That legislation is scheduled to expire later this year. It could stand an upgrade — an individual who wants to install a solar array on a home would only get at best a $2,000 break on a system that would typically cost a lot more than that. The credit should be augmented substantially, but given Congressional lassitude on all but the most pressing of issues, and the fact that this is an election year, simply renewing the credit for another year or two is probably the most that can be hoped for. Then, with a new administration in the white house, a fuller, more sweeping proposal might gain traction.
It’s non-performance like this that gets Congress its 13 percent approval rating, lower, by a wide margin, than that of President George W. Bush.
Solar power, like all the other alternatives, needs as much federal assistance as possible, ideally via tax credits, to help it get off the ground and develop a critical mass to become cost competitive with fossil fuels. The two lines are converging as the technology gets better, but now is the time to really pour it on, in order to break the bonds of the oil-exporting nations. Unlike biofuels such as ethanol, and especially those derived from corn, solar doesn’t offer the potential boomerang of higher prices for food or some other commodity. But neither is solar power a darling of politically powerful farm belt legislators.
Again, there is no single answer to our energy policy problem, but the fact that the Bureau of Land Management had to be browbeaten into reversing its ill-thought out policy, and Congress is dragging its feet on an obvious piece of legislation, is troubling.

1968 - talking 'bout my generation

Thu, 29 May 2008 17:15:33 -0500

Why don’t you all fade away,
Don’t try to dig what we all say.
Not trying to cause a big sensation,
Just talking ‘bout my generation.
From “My Generation,” by The Who, 1965

Another milestone in the endless re-play of 1968, the signature year of “The Sixties,” is coming up next week, with the anniversary of the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
All year we’ve been reminded about how 40 years have gone by since the tumult of 1968. Like a few others in history, it was one of those “big” years: 1776, 1848, 1914 are others that come to mind. So much history was compressed into that brief 12 month period.
Kennedy’s assassination, along with that of Martin Luther King, obviously stand out. Both were products of a culture clash that had been gathering steam for at least five years — since the assassination of President John Kennedy, the event that truly unleashed the forces we think of today when describing the Sixties. But you could of course go back further into the 1950s and detect the cultural stresses that were starting to emerge. But for me, the defining issue of the 1960s was Vietnam, and the fruitless and wrongheaded war the U.S. waged there. Those repercussions fueled all sorts of other tensions — civil rights, sexual freedom, the liberties that an unprecedented level of affluence brought people whose parents and grandparents could scarcely have imagined — all of which led to a creative explosion in the arts and music that still arrests your attention today.
Add in the emergence of the huge cohort of the “baby boom” generation coming of age during a time when the certainties of an earlier age were dissolving, against a back ground of an unpopular war, with a heady new age of musical expression set off by the Beatles and the Rolling stones, with recreational drugs that had been the province of ghettos and jazz bands up until then, and you have quite a mix.
It all came together in a big bang in 1968.
We forget it wasn’t just an American phenomenon, but a global one. Students rioted in France and Germany. The Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia to put the lid on “socialism with a human face.” In Vietnam, we saw the Tet offensive put the lie to claims of steady progress towards winning the war. The U.S, military won virtually every battle fought, but the politicians lost sight of the fact that Vietnam was always about the politics, and support for the war began to crumble after Tet.
It’s interesting that the 40th anniversary has been seized upon as such a convenient point from which to look back and reflect the meaning of all those crazy events. The 40th anniversary of D-Day, in 1984, was made into a big deal — probably because after that, death began to thin the ranks markedly of those veterans who took part in that momentous event. So it may be with 1968 — in another 10 years those who were in their early 20s will be in their 70s and the gap in time may be too much to allow for the same impact.
There are so many ironies to explore. 1968 was all about — or at least largely about — a revolt of the young, giving the middle finger to the ‘establishment.” Now, we are the establishment, and about to pass through the exit door instead of the entranceway. 1968 was about the present, the now; now it is about the past. We see all the mistakes and missed opportunities. Some of it seems real silly. But it was also a time of real commitment, of passionate beliefs, and that, seems in comparably short supply today when it comes to the issues of 2008. The possible exception to that seems to be the environment, but even the specter of global warming and food shortages hasn’t galvanized the same level of participation and engagement.

So I really wanted to write about my now much maligned generation, we baby boomers, using 1968 as a jump off spot. I’m real tired of getting beat up on, caught between the pincers of the remnants of the “Greatest Generation” — who let me hasten to add, I have the utmost respect for, and the slackers of Generations X,Y and Z who are so impressed, apparently, with their collective coolness. Back in the 1960s you often heard talk of a “generation gap” between us boomers and our elders — “The Greatest Generation” before they became great. Now it seems like there’s a gap between us and everybody. The cultural and political rebels of the 1960s became the “me generation” of the 1970s. Well, the 70s were definitely a bad trip, no question. Watergate, energy shocks, inflation, disco — who can get nostalgic about that?
Still, it seems so ironic that we who practically invented generational politics should be regarded as some kind of low point. Now we’re going to mess everyone else over again as we retire and drain what’s left of Social security and Medicare. Nothing will be left for the Xers. Serves those kids right.
I really think that if you stack up all the monumental achievements of the boomers in terms of politics, social change, music and art and any other barometer, we stack up pretty well. Oh, and did I forget computing? Thank you, Steve Jobs. What’s dragged us down is having suffered through two boomer age Presidents, Clinton and Bush, who won’t make anyone forget about Roosevelt or Kennedy. We need someone great to come along to match the greatness of our generation. Too bad Barack Obama, technically a boomer, chooses to distance himself from his own generation in his rush to identify himself with some vague kind of post-partisan politics. Barack, ain’t nothing gonna change, brother. You’ll still be cutting late night deals like everyone else has done since time immemorial.
Unlike Roger Daltrey, the lead singer for The Who, I hope I don’t die before I get old. Life is as much fun now as it ever was. I’m glad I was alive to experience ‘68 though. It was some kind of ride, particularly if you were fortunate enough to not be face down in a rice paddy, like far too many of our generation found themselves.

Trying to send a signal

Fri, 02 May 2008 14:02:49 -0500

One of the daffier ideas that’s come down the Presidential campaign pipeline recently is the summer gas tax holiday. It sounds nice, particularly as prices at the pumps inch — or more likely leap — their way towards $4 per gallon for unleaded regular and beyond. There’s no reason to think they’ll stop at that new threshold of pain. One recently released report predicted $7 per gallon within a few years. The dynamics of the petroleum market are defying the laws of classical capitalism. Supplies are tight, and despite markedly higher prices, demand remains on an upswing. So prices will keep on rising until enough consumers and people who build cars for a living “get it” — and start carpooling, biking or riding the bus to work a lot more than we do now. The auto industry should — but probably won’t — drag out of the closet every fuel efficient piece of technology they’ve tucked away, from hybrids, to electric cars, to solar-powered cars, to cars that run on vegetable oil and any other kind of liquid. The problem is much, much bigger than any of us think. Turning the Titanic around would have been child’s play compared to the challenge that looms before not only the U.S., but the world at large when it comes to not only energy independence but reducing demand to a sustainable level so that all the world’s wealth doesn’t wind up in a handful of countries most Americans still couldn’t find on a map. It’s not really an option either to frantically drill for new deposits of oil in remote or environmentally sensitive spots that would only provide a small trickle, in any event, of what is needed to slake the world’s thirst for petroleum.
So in the face of this enormous challenge, what kind of leadership do we get from Washington, D.C. or the campaign trail? The counterproductive simplicity of a gas tax holiday, precisely the opposite course of what we should be doing. If anything, the price of gas probably should go higher — at least until whatever administration is in office wakes up, smells the coffee and gets serious about supporting alternatives to our present model of cars with combustion engines burning gasoline at current mileage levels as our primary way of getting around.
Barack Obama was the only one of the three major surviving aspirants to the Presidency who gets it on this issue. He correctly spoke out firmly against the idea, arguing that it would do nothing to solve the long term problems and was Washington-style, quick-fix, appease the voters at all costs politics.
That was a rare example of a modern day profile in courage, especially revealing of his strength of character when buffeted by a controversy involving his former pastor. Hopefully most voters are sophisticated enough to see behind the muddled thinking both Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain displayed on this issue.
The first problem is that this federal gas tax money - more than $28 billion — is desperately needed to repair the nation’s crumbling highways, bridges and tunnels. Foregoing the revenue of federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day could slice somewhere between $7-9 billion out of that sum. At a time when much more than $28 billion is needed, this is lunacy. And forget Hillary Clinton’s idea of shifting the burden to oil companies via windfall profits or increased royalties taxes. That shift might be sensible, particularly if those funds were directed to bulking up the federal support for renewable energy sources like wind, solar or geothermal. We need to build those industries to scale up to be economically feasible to drastically reduce our oil consumption, but Congress and the President seem to have concrete overshoes on when it comes to working out a deal to point us in that direction. It’s almost criminal.
But cutting a deal to shift that money away from oil companies to offset a gas tax hike is little more than cynical election politics. There is a real question about whether it could even be voted through Congress, although many may feel voter’s angst on the subject of gas prices could be neatly deflected by the superficial appeal of reducing pump prices by a marginal amount. But all a gas tax would really do is punch another multi-billion dollar hole in the already yawning federal budget deficit.
Sadly, John McCain, who should know better, is also advocating this wrongheaded measure. Now that we’re past the Iowa primary and McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee, he has re-discovered his voice on the ethanol boondoggle, once again hammering it correctly as a misguided government subsidy. But he too has fallen victim to the temptation to tell the voters what he thinks they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear.
And what people need to hear is that carving 20 cents or so out of the cost of a gallon of gas not only will not save a lot of money — the oil producing nations will see to that — but it puts off for another few months the price signal that needs to be sent to pound the message home that there is no substitute for fuel conservation and energy efficient vehicles that are leagues beyond what Detroit seems capable of producing now. Thirty miles to a gall on seems like a big deal to these guys, but we need cars that average 60, 70, 80 or much more than that. That would drop the cost of driving back down to a level supportable by the economy, as well as put us on the path towards energy independence, and, by the way, reducing all those carbon emissions most scientists are convinced are at the heart of climate change.
We’re running out of time to make these wrenching changes happen with a relatively minimal amount of pain. Relatively, because there will be pain, but nothing like what will happen 20 years from now if we put our heads back in the sand on this subject like we did as a nation in the 1980s and 1990s.

The China Syndrome

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:30:01 -0500

The China Syndrome
One of the more intriguing stories of 2007 was the emergence — long overdue — of concerns about the safety and quality of some Chinese-made products. These worries were especially pointed when it came to the lead-based paint used on many toys made in China, a development that led to the few remaining Vermont handcrafted toymakers seeing blizzards of orders far in excess of what they could comfortably produce. Many other businesses wished they had such problems.
In some cases, the use of lead-based paint wasn’t necessarily the fault or doing of the Chinese manufacturers who fabricated the toys which were then sold in the U.S. under well-known brand names. Sometimes it was pressure from our side to keep costs low that forced them to cut corners. Other Chinese manufacturers were simply less scrupulous, careless or indifferent to the potential health hazards.
China has become the workshop of the world when it comes to a vast array of commodities largely because its labor costs are so low. They’ve also improve their manufacturing standards, this year’s lead-paint dust up notwithstanding. That’s a position it may not enjoy forever — other even lower cost countries in the Far East are bidding to attract manufacturing to their borders. Ultimately, that’s good news for American consumers. We worry about jobs being exported overseas, but in the main these are lower end jobs most American don?t want — working in dangerous, mind-numbing factory assembly lines isn’t what most folks want to do when they grow up. We can’t even fill the job openings a dynamic economy creates right here, which explains in large part why we have so many immigrants, some legal, some not, who want to come here. And P.S. — we like being able to go to Wal-Mart or some other discount store and be able to purchase clothing and virtually everything else made in China for a fraction of what it would cost if it were made here.
The point is — you can?t have it both ways. You can’t buy a U.S. made consumer product for the same amount as an identical Chinese-made one. You get to choose between the satisfaction of supporting a domestic manufacturer or spending less money. Most people seem to prefer spending less money.
The U.S. is still one of the world’s leading manufacturing nations thanks to investments in technology and an educated workforce that is more productive than other nations. We also have an economy that is twice the size of China’s, measured by gross domestic product. That may change as China’s industrial march continues, or it may come to a screeching halt is any one of the numerous problems bubbling underneath the surface in China — from the environment to a one-party government that has to corral many problems and keep provincial bosses in line — were to blow up. Those are real possibilities, and may not be welcome news either in the long run.
But back to toys and lead paint. Happily there is still a market for handcrafted toys and people willing to make them. But globalization of the world’s economy is a fact of life and it?s not going away, however much some may wax nostalgic for the old days of belching factories and their unsafe working conditions. They also employed lots of people and paid well. It also allowed many folks the luxury of stopping their education after high school, going to work at the mill and being able to support themselves and a family. Modern manufacturing has come a long way and we could use more of it in Vermont. But it will be a very different kind of manufacturing than our grandparents knew. It will require a smart, intelligent workforce that needs more training than the typical high school is set up to supply.
And it’s time to stop fretting about the lack of goods made in America and how everything is made in China. It’s not their fault. It’s a lot less stressful if you focus on the flip side of that equation — the money you have to spend on other things you want.

Primary Colors

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:55:24 -0500

Hard as it may seem, the Presidential election is now only 10 months away. It seems like it's been going on forever all ready. Truly, we are in the era of the "endless campaign," when the jockeying for political advantage for the next run for the Presidency starts 15
minutes after the current President is sworn in. Whoever was responsible for that ought to be exiled to a land far away that doesn't have high speed Internet service or hand-held Blackberry communication devices. That sort of sounds a bit like Vermont right now.
At any rate, we have a passel of candidates in both parties who have been crisscrossing the country with a certain focus on the early primary or caucus states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, engaging in so-called debates, town hall meetings and the obligatory coffee and doughnuts chat with prospective voters. Only in recent
weeks have any of the candidates begun to focus in to any degree of specificity that would enable voters to get a sense of what they would actually do with regard to foreign and domestic issues if elected President. But at least now it's getting a little more
interesting, particularly on the Democrat side, where Senator Barrack Obama seems to have finally overcome an earlier reluctance to take on Senator Hillary Clinton, the acknowledged front-runner in that party's primary. Over on the GOP side, the regrettable tendency of primaries to attract only the most hard-core of a political party's supporters seems to have encouraged their front-runners to engage in a game of who can best claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan and who is safest on social issues close to the heart of right-wing Republicans.
General elections, however on won on the basis of who appeals most to the majority of voters on the political center. Voters will want to carefully follow the delicate dance that Presidential candidates have to do to court primary voters successfully, who then find themselves obliged to pivot back to the political center to scoop up the middle-of-the-road voters to succeed in the general election.
The issues the candidates run on matter. A candidate who says they are for cutting taxes, for example, doesn't have a mandate to do the opposite should circumstances dictate. Such a reversal underlay the demise of the first George Bush, when "Read my lips, no new taxes," turned out not to be a workable policy. There's a fine line between
political expediency and pragmatism.
Here are a few of the major issues we see as critical. We'll look at only two here today - foreign policy and energy policy. The two are, of course, very interrelated.
Every election lately seems to be characterized as a "turning point" or a "crossroads" in the nation's history, and to some degree that is true. But the winner of the 2008 election would seem to be likely to inherit a table groaning with leftover issues and unfinished
business. The War in Iraq, obviously, commands center stage. Whether in the long run the Bush Administration's grand strategy of defusing the radical Islamic terrorist threat by toppling Saddam Hussein and installing a democratic government in the heart of the Middle East turns out to be successful, remains to be seen. At best, this will be a ?success? bought at a much higher price than any of the war?s architects imagined. Clearly the means they chose to achieve that risky outcome were deeply flawed. The conflict has gone on far longer, and at vastly greater cost, both in blood and
financial treasure, than its proponents thought. And they should have
thought longer about it because the aftermath of the initial phase was obvious ? an Iraqi insurgency.
So foreign affairs, certainly when it comes to Iraq, but hardly limited to that, will be a major testing area for the new administration, whoever it turns out to be. Included in that realm would be relations with rising powers like India and china, and how to cope with a resurgent Russia, its wounded self-image now fortified by oil revenues. How do we get back on track with our historic European allies, a process the chastened Bush administration now seems to be taking more seriously. And that is only what's at the top
of that list.
But just because the present administration downplayed "nation building" in preference to military intervention, that doesn't mean the latter is a tool that should be thrown out of the tool shed. So candidates for President should be asked - under what circumstances
would you authorize military force in foreign lands?
Foreign policy of course, spills over into a lot of areas. The second big issue the new administration will have to deal with more seriously and coherently is energy policy. Moving forcefully in the direction of energy independence, away from reliance on the Middle Eastern petro-states, is a top priority. Encouraging all kinds of alternatives, from renewables such as wind and solar is one thing, but achieving meaningful energy independence goes far beyond that.
Specific measures like a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, a guaranteed floor price for oil so alternative energy suppliers don't have to fear being run out of business if the price of oil collapses again (hard as that may be to fathom in an era of $90-100 per barrel
oil, it could happen), a cap-and-trade system of controlling carbon emissions, maybe even a gas tax and certainly mandated much higher fuel economy standard in automobiles - these are but a few of the ideas that come readily to mind.
They all share a common denominator - they involve pain and sacrifice. Anyone running for President should then be asked ? when will you directly tell the voting public not what it wants to hear, but what it needs to hear on energy? What will your prescription be, and do you have the courage to ask all Americans to play their
necessary roles.
While we're taking care of business on the energy independence front, we'll also be moving in the right direction on climate change and global warming issues. There's no shortage of compelling circumstantial evidence we're going through a warming phase. The issue what can we do to meaningfully modify that. There's no simple solution, and those that are out there carry expensive price tags that need to be factored into the discussion.
Next up: the domestic issues.

Joseph Ellis

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 12:00:18 -0500

For a history wonk, it almost doesn’t get any better than the talk given last night (Wednesday, Dec. 5) at the First Congregational Church in Manchester Village by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph Ellis.
Despite one blemish on his record — he exaggerated his participation in the military when it came to discussing his service in Vietnam in his classroom lectures, for which he acknowledged a lapse in judgment and was suspended from his professorship at Mt. Holyoke college for a year — Ellis is one of the superstars of the history business. He’s a great writer, and not just in terms of output. He’s written extensively about the American Revolutionary period, mining what would seem to have been a pretty exhausted shaft for new insights into what is arguably the most significant moment in the nation’s history. And he’s done it in an enjoyable, readable way that doesn’t sacrifice content.
The Revolutionary generation has my vote for the greatest American generation. Indeed, to digress — I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m getting really weary of all the “Greatest Generation” stuff heaped on the Depression-World War II generation. They probably are getting a little embarrassed by it too, if their legendary humility is any guide. Not to take anything away from their accomplishments, but every generation, I think, is great in its own way — each historical period brings forth different challenges that each generation in a leadership role has thrust upon it. I may be biased but I happen to think my own “Baby Boomer” generation — once celebrated, now seemingly responsible for all the world’s ills, will one day be once again recognized as a remarkable group of people who busted through the dead nonsense of the past and pointed the way to better attitudes towards all kinds of things. And, oh yeah, there’s all that other stuff, like personal computers and the Internet, that came into being on our watch.
This is a circular way of addressing the fact that if any generation deserves the accolade of ‘the greatest,” it’s arguably the Revolutionary War generation - the first Americans - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton and the rest. Of course, age-wise they spanned several generations, but we think of them as being one group. When you think of what they accomplished — as Ellis guides us through in his latest book “American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic” — it stirs anew a sense of wonder. The odds of them successfully carrying out the Revolution seem in retrospect to have been laughably small. While all history, if only because it’s largely written by the winners, always seems to take on an air on inevitability, the American Revolution could easily have ended, at several points, far differently and less gloriously. This “what-if” game is a fascinating parlor game for history buffs, but it does help create a context for appreciating how amazing our Revolution really was.
Ellis cites two huge accomplishments of the Revolutionary generation — they were the first to successfully wage and win a war against Great Britain, the world’s biggest, baddest superpower of the time, and they were the first to create a democratic and large republic. The prevailing wisdom of the 18th century was that republican governments were viable only if smallish, city-state type affairs, not big countries like the 13 colonies created. We tend to take it for granted but every time I read an account of the Constitutional Convention I am struck anew by how amazing that was. The cluster of ideas, the compromises that made it possible, is truly one of the greatest stories every told.
Set against those successes are two large failures — the failure to point the way to ending slavery and the mishandling of the Native American question. The Founders said they didn’t want to deprive the “savages” of their land without some form of compensation, but that is exactly what happened. Washington considered that failure to be the greatest stain on his record. And they knew slavery was the evil seed that could one day unravel all their hard work and sacrifice.. The price was steep — more than 600,000 deaths by the next great generation of Americans — the Civil War generation. That’s a big price to pay. But as Ellis points out, it was probably inevitable. Slavery just wasn’t going to be done away with through legislative fiat. They hoped to contain it in the southeastern U.S. and have it wither away gradually. Instead, it went out with a big bloody bang, and then we lived for more than another 100 years with de facto segregation and only very recently, within the past 20-30 years, have we begun to overcome the legacy of racism in any kind of meaningful way.
Beyond being a great writer, Ellis is a gifted speaker, at turns funny, engaging, changing tones, calling on the students in the audience for questions, and clearly, prepped in advance by the student’s history teacher, joking about asking questions for extra credit. You can imagine him being just great in the classroom.
All in all, another great night at “First Wednesdays,” the lecture series sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council, the Northshire Bookstore, the Green Mountain Academy for Lifelong Learning and the Mark Skinner Library. You can’t beat the setting either. The first Congregational Church is one of those places that oozes New England — you can almost feel the tug of history sitting in the pews where earlier generations sat for worship all the way back to - well, the Revolution. It’s perfect.
Especially the speaker speaking from the pulpit. Both Ellis and Frank Bryan, the UVM professor who spoke last month made some pretty good introductory ice breaking jokes about being Biblical or waiting for lightning to strike. It must be kind of cool to face the audience of “worshippers” and hold forth.

Ken Burns

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:42:54 -0500

Last night’s performance, if that’s the word, by filmmaker Ken Burns at the Equinox Resort in an appearance sponsored by the Northshire Bookstore certainly lived up to its billing. Burns, as everyone must know by now, is the main force behind the new PBS series on World War II — “The War” — that captured millions of viewers during its run in September. It’s a worthy follow up to his earlier productions — his 1990 “The Civil War” being perhaps the most notable, but his other pieces on jazz, baseball, Thomas Jefferson, the Lewis and Clark expedition, among others, were equally excellent — and it’s good news that another series on National Parks is already well into production.
Burn’s influence on the genre of historical documentaries is so vast people are already using the term “the Burns effect” - the slow panning of an old photograph to create the illusion of a movie when dealing with a subject that predates movies. That’s called impact.
Live, in person, Burns is an animated, articulated speaker clearly passionately involved with his subjects. He spoke with great feeling about the making of the World War II piece, and how deeply it affected him. Stirring the long-suppressed and often painful memories of veterans of often harsh combat requires a deft touch and extreme sensitivity, which Burns carried off with the right mix of sensitivity and respect while bringing forward often uncomfortable truths. What I found among the most thought provoking bits of his discussion was the degradation of the teaching of not only this, but other history, to the younger generation of Americans currently in schools. That’s a critique that could have been leveled 10, 20 or 30 - probably 100 years ago. It’s one I’m sensitive to as a former history teacher in my short-lived career in education. I loved the subject in school, so it’s often hard for me to understand why everyone else doesn’t as well. The movement of great historical forces, political personalities, warfare, and later on, economics, is all just fascinating.
And yet Burns cited as one of his primary motivating influences behind the making of “The War” an alarming sense that recent high school graduates were even more historically illiterate than they used to be. Many don’t even know who our Allies were, much less some of the micro-details about the conflict and how it influenced the next 40 plus years through the end of the Cold War. It’s influence, of course, is still being felt today.
Burns attributes the decline of student interest to a move away from story narrative as a basis for interesting kids in the study of history — it’s become too dry and academic, one is left to suppose — a surprising outcome given the emphasis on all kinds of social histories - gender, race, class, etc. that emphasize the role of the common person. Another problem is that Americans seem to have a built-in bias against history - if we worry too much about the past, we miss what’s coming next. I don’t know if we’re any different from other cultures in this regard — undoubtedly some revere and place more emphasis on understanding their national or cultural past than we do.
Many others have bemoaned this lack of interest in things of the past — “that’s history” goes the common refrain — and there’s no point in me belaboring it again. The idea of narrative being supplanted makes some sense to me, but more significant is that lack of interest in both past history and present history in the typical American home. When was the last time you and your family sat around and discussed anything historical — from something involving popular culture or politics? And the other piece is a passionate teacher. A talented passionate teacher is a prerequisite to instilling interest in their students — too many times, it seems, that’s not there. There may be a lot of reasons for that, not all of them the fault of the classroom teacher, who has a very tough job.
All in all, an enjoyable night. What did the rest of you think?

Bruce Juice II and III

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 22:25:07 -0500

If you read my first blog post a couple of weeks ago about the (then) upcoming Bruce Springsteen concert that occurred last Thursday, Nov. 15, you were probably wondering what happened to the sequels I promised. Well, life got busy, and by the time the show rolled around, it was all I could do just to get there.
To make a long story short, the wife and I got there, with the obligatory last-minute parking lot hysteria in Albany, but by some miracle, at 7:30 p.m. we were in our seats, ready to rock.
Just like the army, following the hurrying up comes the waiting. Then more waiting.
Finally at nearly 8:30 – an hour after the show was supposed to start the lights dimmed and the Times Union, formerly Pepsi, formerly Knickerbocker Area roared with the keening of Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccccce.
And we were off.
Oh my God. I’ve been a moderate to big fan of the Boss’s since the Born to Run days, but had never seen a live show before. I’m not going to wait another 32 years before the next one. Starting with the show opener “Radio Nowhere” (a perfect concert opener giving Bruce the chance to scream out before he kicked it off by asking if anybody was alive out there to the darkened audience, then through all the mega faves – “No Surrender,” “Candy’s Room,” “Badlands,” “She’s the One,” – God they all blur together after awhile, less than 24 hours ago - plus a bunch of stuff from the new album, which grew on me after a slow start - My favorite song “Girl’s in their summer clothes,” which conveniently was the first of four encores. Wow, the guy never stops moving. Song after song, many without a real pause in between. I never wanted it to end. This guy connects in a way that's unreal, and I'm well past the phase of viewing my rock star heroes as messengers from the Gods. It feels honest, authentic, like he really gets off performing and making music. He's one of the lucky ones who completely found his niche.
If there are such things as "old souls" and "new souls" - Bruce is a very old soul, ready to move on to the next level or being after this spin through the planet. There is nowhere higher to go as a mere mortal.
I sort of floated out of there, re-connecting with how cool it used to feel going to concerts. Hadn’t had that feeling in a while.
Kids, if you haven’t seen him yet, catch it before it’s too late. I don’t know what the E Street Band sounded like 20 or 30 years ago, but they couldn’t have been a lot better than this.
Here’s the other thing – how many groups that have been around that long are touring and doing fresh material that you actually want to hear? Nobody. Not the Stones, not Van Halen, not the Eagles. It’s oldies hour, and that’s cool, the old stuff still sounds great. But Bruce and friends are covering that, plus doing dynamite new songs that are just as good.
Who else went? What were your reactions?

One toke over the line

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:29:52 -0500

Every so often, one of those situations pops up in Vermont that produces a knotty conflict where neither side has a monopoly on common sense. Such would seem, at first blush, to be the case involving a 61 year-old Windsor County lawyer and part-time family court judge who was busted last month for growing marijuana at her home.

For those of you who haven’t been following the ins and outs of this fascinating case, the Windsor County States Attorney recently opted to let off the offending lawyer with what would seem to be a legal wrist slap, ordering her into a court diversion program, which, if successfully completed, would result in no criminal record. Outraged, Gov. Jim Douglas responded by ordering the state police to refer all drug cases in Windsor County to the attorney general or the U.S. attorney general’s office, bypassing Robert Sand, the Windsor County States Attorney.

Somewhere, Abbie Hoffman and the rest of Woodstock Nation must be howling with laughter.

After the chuckling is over about a member of the legal community being hoisted by their own petard, there’s a serious issue at stake.

If court ordered diversion is a standard practice in such a case – a first time offender charged with possession of a controlled substance, Sand may have a point that this is an appropriate ruling. It's a typical punishment for first-time pot offenders in cases his office has handled, he has said. Hopefully, it would be so if the offender were an ordinary working young person as it is for a professional woman who is almost at retirement age.

But there is more involved here. Martha Davis, the lawyer and alleged marijuana cultivator, was arrested with more than two pounds of cannabis in her possession. That’s a plentiful stash if it was intended solely for personal use. It suggests intent to distribute, which takes us to another level.

Secondly, isn’t it fair to expect legal officers of the court, whether they are lawyers or judges, to be held to a higher standard when it comes to violating the law? They are the ones sworn to uphold it. The credibility and impartiality of the administration of justice – its “blindness” to social rank or stature – are critical in creating a civil society that respects the law. It would seem that officers of the court should strive to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, while we recognize they are fallible human beings like every one else.

Maybe Sand would have handed down the same decision for anyone. But if Davis had been living in another county, would her fate have been the same? Maybe, maybe not.

Marijuana use by private individuals is a slippery subject that different people view differently. Clearly it has potentially lethal effects on youngsters too young to consume it without courting physiological risk. Clearly, for some people, it’s a gateway drug that opens the doors to the hard stuff. For a 61-year-old, such risks may be much less of an issue. If we impose two standards based on age when it comes to things like driving an automobile or consuming alcohol, maybe it’s fair to do so with marijuana.

Meanwhile, the law is the law, and in this case, a temporary disbarment from being able to practice law would seem to be not unreasonable for attorneys who knowingly take such a risk. That just shows bad judgment.

Rudy, you loser

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:01:51 -0500

I used to live in New York, the city, I mean. Actually, I was born there, the Bronx to be exact, which explains, I hope, the nature of my baseball loyalties. That means I'm not a Red Sox fan.
I also spent 14 years living in Brooklyn, after I left college, so between all of that I qualify as a "New Yawker" and I'm proud of it. Not always, but most of the time, I thrilled to the beat and buzz of the big city, and while time has taken its toll, I still enjoy going back for the occasional visit and marveling at how so much has changed. And for the better. The city is cleaner. The subways are cleaner. For someone who remembers the subways of the 1970s and 80s, it's astonishing how much better it all looks now.
A good part of that change is attributable, I think, to the mayoralty of Rudy Guiliani, whose tenure I unfortunately missed while a resident of the Big Apple. I left midway during the late and lamentable one term of David Dinkins, who was truly bad at the job.
This is a rambling way of establishing my bona fides for commenting on the Presidential aspirations of the same Mr. Guiliani, who committed one of those extraordinary political faux pas last week that leave the ordinary person gasping in astonishment at how stupid supposedly intelligent people can be. Maybe our extended presidential campaigns are overlong for a reason. They do have a way of revealing insights that you'd never expect.
About a week ago, I read in the New York Post that hizzoner was rooting for the Red Sox in the World Series, which of course as we now know they won. As anyone who knows anything about Sir Rudy knows, the rest of the time he has cloaked himself in Yankee fandom. He gets the prime seats between home plate and the Yankee dugout for all the big games. He got to ride up Broadway during all those ticker tape parades in the glory years of the late 1990s. So the concept of Rudy rooting for the Sox was a little like Arnold Schwartzenegger telling us he was going in for a sex change.

Talking Heads

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:56:38 -0500

I have long been fascinated by the Green Mountain Academy. They are an organization based here in Manchester that hosts all kinds of interesting gatherings, seminars, "brown bag" lunch time meetings, on all the subjects that an inquisitive, inquiring mind would find intriguing. A lot of it involves political stuff, foreign policy and international affairs — all those things I love and cherish — but also a helping of cross-cultural dialogues that cover a range of topics. Year after year, they tap into the wealth of knowledge and expertise that always surprises you exists here — as in I didn't know that guy lived in....... take your pick of towns right here in the neighborhood.
Last night was another example of this when they hosted a panel discussion on the Middle East featuring four really interesting guys — Barrie Dunsmore, the former ABC-TV foreign correspondent and newscaster, Mansour Farhang, a Bennington college professor, Haviland Smith, a former CIA agent who for my money stole the show with his straight talk and Ronald Spiers, a former ambassador and State Department foreign policy expert.